Little Church upon the Sea

The Kirchlein am Meer stands on the edge of Schobüll, a village near Husum on Schleswig-Holstein’s North Sea coast. Built in the 13th century from red brick, it is one of the region’s oldest churches and sits at the foot of the Schobüller Berg, a low hill that once guided ships into Husum harbour. Originally a small chapel serving the parish of Hattstedt, it was later dedicated to the Virgin Mary and became known as the ‘little church by the sea’. The tower collapsed in 1780 and was rebuilt shorter in 1785, then altered again in 1896. After a thorough restoration in 1972–73, its walls were stripped of old paint and given a plain white wash in 2020.

The church’s simple early-Gothic design is clear in its long rectangular choir and short nave, both covered by red-tiled roofs. The choir’s gable is decorated with a herringbone brick pattern, and narrow pointed windows light its north and south walls. A blocked hagioscope on the south side once let lepers watch the service from outside. Inside, a flat wooden ceiling spans the nave, and a pointed arch opens into the choir. The 17th-century gallery is lined with paintings donated by parishioners, and the pulpit cover dates from the early 18th century.

Visitors step into a whitewashed space dominated by a large painted crucifixion group above the choir arch. The life-size figures, carved around 1270, were moved to their present position in 1941. Below hangs a late-15th-century painted altarpiece with delicate green and red patterns, and beside it a 15th-century Namur stone font. On the north wall, a row of 14 painted wooden apostles, possibly from a lost Strander church, looks down from a 17th-century frame. Outside, the quiet churchyard overlooks the flat marshland and distant dykes of the North Frisian coast.